NaNoWriMo Week 2: Onward and Upward!

November 19, 2018

The second full week of NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and I have a couple confessions to make. 1) I am waaay behind on my NaNoWriMo project. 2) I’m actually kind of okay with that. Here’s what’s been going on.

I recently got an idea for an entirely new flash fiction piece about 1700 words long, and have spent the last few weeks drafting it, revising it, and polishing it up. It takes place in a fantasy-version of Iceland a long, long time ago. I’m submitting it for the first time today, so wish me luck!

I’ve been trying to keep up with The Island Book as well, adding 600 words a day to the manuscript.

Then of course my space circus NaNoWriMo project landed right on top of those, which would require about 1600 words a day.

And then, most exciting of all, two of my very best friends and fellow writers (Kris Atkins and Zena Parks) finished drafting each of their current works-in-progress. After I gave each of their (brilliant) manuscripts a quick read-through for context, they started sending me about three chapters a week for more in-depth developmental critique. Reading their work is an absolute joy, but that’s two more projects on top of my other three.

So that’s how I ended up with five projects in November and over 2000 words of writing a day. And, well, I froze. My first week saw me crash and burn. I didn’t get anything done on anything that entire week. Instead, I just spent the whole time feeling overwhelmed. In order to not repeat my mistakes the second week, I decided that something had to be flexible. My Island Book manuscript had to be the top priority, because really, everything else exists in order to support that particular dream. Critiques for my friends came in at number two, because that’s supporting their dreams, and the flash fiction piece came in third, because if I look at it like an emergency triage situation, that’s the one I can fix up and get out of the way the easiest. That meant that my space circus novella came in last place, which was helpful, since it was adding 1600 words to my daily quota.

So what does this mean? Probably that I’m not going to win NaNoWriMo this year. What does it NOT mean? It doesn’t mean that November has been unproductive. It’s actually been very productive! I’ve created what I think it some of my best work yet. And I went to my third aerial silk class, because I still want to do the research AND it really has been on my bucket list for a long time. Also, I paid in advance, hahaha.

I’ve included some videos from Class #3 below, just in case you missed them. If you’d like to follow my progress more closely, check out my Facebook Page and Instagram.